Virtually every company offers its sales team some form of sales training.
Whether it's a two-day product orientation or a six-week skills-building
curriculum, sales training is considered an important tool for making each of
its sales reps more productive. Often, that initial sales training is reinforced
with periodic experiences to remind the sales team how and when to use their
various sales techniques. Many times, additional training is scheduled around
the annual sales meeting when everyone is brought together for other purposes,
and sales training becomes a natural adjunct.
Through these sales training events, reps develop insights into the company's
sales process, products and services; they evaluate their own skills and figure
out methods for their own improvement; and they motivate themselves to work
hard, work smart and achieve high levels of sales success.
While these types of sales training experiences are useful in getting people
started on the right track and re-emphasizing important sales skills, they often
end up disappointing the executives that initiated them in the first place. As
the results are tabulated in terms of increased revenue or numbers of customers,
the growth can be well behind the goals.
There are many factors that can impact sales results, but one of the major
areas to review is the sales training plan. If the plan consists of a series of
separate training events with significant time gaps between events, the current
training curriculum may need some revisions. It may not be able to deliver the
intended results.
Without Reinforcement, Sales Skills Deteriorate
To understand the problem better, you need to go back to that initial sales
training experience. Reps often emerge from such programs invigorated by the
experience and the new ideas; they're ready to put their new skills to work. But
after an initial brief increase in productivity, something seems to go wrong.
Productivity begins to deteriorate and often returns to the pre-training level.
There are several reasons this deterioration of skills takes place. Reps
leave sales training with great enthusiasm for their newfound insights. Maybe
they've picked up a new approach to assessing a prospect's needs or a great way
to answer an objection. Whatever they left the training session planning to use,
the experience often goes like this:
•
I'm going to use that new approach on my next
prospect call.
•
Hmm, the prospect didn't respond the way he or she
was supposed to, according to the training session. (The prospect didn't attend
the session, so he didn't know the script.)
•
Let me try that again. I must have done it wrong.
•
Something's not right. I'm just not getting it.
•
I don't think that technique works for me. Let me go
back to that other technique I was using. At least I know what to do with it.
When reps discover that it's much harder than they expected to change their
sales techniques, they often give up and return to their former methods of
selling -- losing much of the benefit and a great deal of their motivation from
attending the training session.
Tools For Reinforcing Sales Skills
Several tools can be used to reinforce sales skills learned in sales training
courses and to produce consistent increases in productivity:
•
Mentoring by senior sales reps
•
Coaching by sales management
•
Product update sessions with product developers or
marketing executives
•
Sales meetings
•
Follow-up on training sessions
•
Videotapes, books and audiotapes
The goal of these tools is to continue the focus on improving individual
selling techniques begun in the initial sales training and re-emphasized in
subsequent major training events.
Recently, another option has been introduced -- using the company's own Web
site to reinforce sales training. While the Web is often viewed as a great
selling or customer service tool, it's also an excellent environment for sales
training.
Benefits Of Using The Web To Reinforce Sales Training
While other methods for reinforcing sales training concepts and skills are
likely to contribute to an increase in sales productivity, the Web offers some
unique advantages that other methods cannot offer. Web-based sales training
reinforcement is:
Time efficient
Sales reps can go to the Web and work with the information placed there
without being slowed down by other reps. The reinforcement training also does
not require time from other people such as senior reps and managers, whose time
may be much more limited.
Portable
Because sales reps can access the site from anywhere they happen to be, they
can as easily use the sales training materials from a hotel or airport as they
can from their own office.
Interesting
Reps find the Web to be a valuable source of information and are more likely
to spend time looking at this information than at the same information in a
different format.
Connected to other valuable resources
Reps who come to the Web site for one piece of information tend to follow
links to other valuable information they might need.
How To Use The Web To Reinforce Sales Training
Here's how it might work if you were to establish Web-based sales training
reinforcement for your company:
•
Examine your current sales training curriculum to
identify the major skills, process steps or other important components of your
training.
•
Share this list with senior sales and marketing staff
to determine the payoff areas for reinforcement. Determine skills that the reps
are having the most difficult time using.
•
From these, choose the highest-priority payoff skills
to reinforce. (From our experience, two areas that are most likely to come up
are listening and asking open-ended questions.)
•
Pick one of the high-priority payoff skills to begin
your reinforcement program. Assemble information from your existing sales
training curriculum into a format that can be used for the Web. (Or ask for
assistance from your Webmaster.)
•
Have your Webmaster put this information on your Web
site, tied with links to additional information you might want the sales reps to
be thinking about, such as a new product's description or a new procedure.
•
E-mail all of your sales reps an announcement that
this material is available, and encourage them to go to that area of the Web
site.
•
Change the information every week or two so there is
always something new for the reps to use to continue to refine their skills.
Types Of Materials That Work Best
It should be easy to adapt your current sales training materials for use on
the Web. Some guidelines to help you edit your existing materials into effective
Web learning materials:
Keep the training information relatively short
Salespeople are often reluctant to read longer pieces of information directly
from their computers. You may find it useful to take your training material on
any single skill and cut it down to the most important points.
Make it fun
Think of ways to make your short piece of sales training information
entertaining. Add humor or use interesting graphics or illustrations, to name
just a couple of techniques you can use.
Put it in their world
Use brief stories, based on real situations if at all possible, to help reps
see how the concepts or steps in the sales training information fit into their
own selling efforts with their prospects.
Focus on application of the skills
Make sure that, one way or another, you create a situation in which
salespeople are required to apply the information to their own sales activities.
Think Web, not book
Take advantage of the medium to draw on other resources that are available on
your Web site or others you can link to. Give sales reps access to gateways to
relevant information.
One Final Suggestion
And just to make sure that sales reps take advantage of these opportunities
to refine their sales training programs, it's advisable to set up some type of a
reporting system. Information on who is using the Web training can be forwarded
to either the training department or the sales manager.
Derby Management
http://www.derbymanagement.com
More sales training tips...
